Talent Night
by devovere
Summary: Traveling Woman, Part 3. Naomi has a birthday coming up. Sam isn't feeling it.


_The premise of this series is that Samantha Wildman, designated madonna figure of Voyager, has an interior life. It isn't always pretty._

 _This story references birth trauma, infant death, postpartum depression, breastfeeding, and weaning._

 _I wasn't a writer, until MiaCooper said I should be. Warmest thanks to her for opening that door and then beta-ing what emerged through it._

Naomi will be a year old next week.

It's such a cliche: "I can't believe how fast she's growing up." But my daughter is half-Ktarian - in human terms, she truly IS growing up incredibly fast. She walked at seven months and started speaking in sentences by ten months. She knows her colors and can count to twenty and last week she learned how to undress herself. (Don't ask where she first demonstrated that skill. I didn't know Tom Paris was capable of blushing so hard. At least Tuvok wasn't fazed, but then he is Vulcan. And a father himself.)

Songs are her favorite. Neelix has taught her so many - Talaxian ones, and even Earth and Ktarian songs from the database. She knows the lullaby I've always sung to her. I can hear her singing it to herself right now, in fact. _Hush, little baby, don't say a word. Papa's going to buy you a lara bird…_ She hasn't learned all the verses yet. Maybe just as well. It's not a happy song.

Naomi hasn't asked me yet about her papa. I keep holos of him on display and talk about him to her. I don't think she really understands, though, that he is a real person, that she has a father who just … isn't here with us. It's just words to her, like in the lullaby.

It's just so strange to think that this time last year, I was hugely pregnant, in that dreadful maternity uniform, waddling around the ship. And now my stomach is flat again (well … mostly…) and I'm chasing a toddler around the ship instead. Quarters to mess hall to babysitter. Then I can walk like a normal adult to my science station - except half the time my uniform is smeared with Naomi's breakfast. At least I'm not leaking milk anymore; Naomi weaned last month. She's just growing up _so fast_ .

The doctor has been monitoring her growth, of course, and he assures me that she's getting all the nutrients she needs from table food now. She's obviously thriving - growing so fast I run short on replicator rations every couple months, just keeping her in clothes that fit. I just … I miss my baby. I didn't think I would miss breastfeeding her, but I do. We still cuddle, of course. When she lets me. When she's with me.

Well. Of course, I'm lucky to have so much help with her. Especially … during that bad spell, after Hanon IV. The doctor said I just needed more rest along with the new drug regimen, and Commander Chakotay was happy to rearrange everyone's shifts so I could work fewer hours and Naomi could have more babysitters. And I am getting better, lately, I guess. I only cried twice yesterday.

It just seems so strange that I'd be struggling like this now, instead of when she was a newborn. Maybe it's a delayed reaction, or cumulative. With her birthday coming up I've found myself remembering her birth. Sometimes I start recalling it and it's like I go on autopilot and then I look up fifteen minutes later and can't remember what I've been doing, how I got from the mess hall back to our quarters or what I've been doing with the data analysis in front of me.

The files on postpartum depression call it "intrusive thoughts." I can't talk to the doctor about it. He was there when it happened. I don't want to discuss it with him. I know he was doing his best under difficult circumstances - a complicated Ktarian-human birth, the emergency beam-out. Sometimes I dream it. It's impossible to describe the sensation - everyone knows that tingle of the transporter, but to feel it just in my midsection, and then my contracting belly closing down on … emptiness, where a second ago I had been stretched full of squirming life. So sudden. I could see the baby materialize in the warmer next to my biobed but it was like my brain couldn't grasp that she was mine, that she'd come from my body. She could have been beamed in from anywhere.

And then the ship under attack, a poorly timed power outage, and the baby dying. My baby, dead.

Then not. Or, yes, still dead, but a new baby, alive, brought from the other Voyager by the other Harry Kim. He had carried her through the subspace rift, from another me - a me who was dead now.

So you see, Naomi and I, we both died on the day she was born.

And then I was holding my baby who twice over didn't really feel like my baby, and everything was fixed, it was OK, she was OK, the Vidiians were gone, the ship was safe. We were safe. And I was a mother, with a baby to care for. No husband. No grandparents. And I realized I didn't even know how to feed my child.

It must have been at least an hour, maybe longer, since she'd been born, over on that other Voyager, now obliterated with her mother, except I was her mother and I knew she should eat but … I didn't know how or when, or how to know when … how to feed her. I asked the doctor. I said, "When can I breastfeed?" I think what I really meant was, "Are you sure I'm this child's mother?"

But he was programmed to educate new parents about breastfeeding, and educate me he did. Later, weeks into it, when we'd gotten the hang of it, I laughed at myself, asking a male hologram for permission to bring my own newborn to breast. But maybe I should have wept instead, for how confused and helpless I felt in that moment.

Maybe I've been making up for those buried tears since Hanon IV.

I hate when I cry in public. I thought I was past that, but then I cried at the talent show the other night. I don't think anyone really noticed; thankfully they were all watching Naomi and Neelix on stage. If anyone did see me, hopefully they assumed I was just happy and proud of my clever daughter, growing up so fast. And I am. I am, truly. And grateful. It was so thoughtful of Tom to invite Naomi and Neelix to perform. Of course Neelix was delighted by the idea. (Hmm, now that I think of it … maybe it was Neelix's idea to begin with.)

Naomi didn't understand what was happening, of course - and at first with the lights and everyone watching she got a little shy, even started to cry. But Neelix was right there with a squeeze and a smile, and once he started singing their favorite Talaxian nursery rhyme, she settled right in and sang along, in her sweet clear baby voice. She is such a little ham! The audience was cheering and clapping, Neelix was beaming, and Naomi was giggling and clapping her own little hands.

I hate that I almost ruined it all by crying. I was standing against the wall, towards the back of the room, and just started feeling really strange. Separate, detached, like everyone around me was performing in a play and I was the only one with no script, no lines. Naomi has been the absolute center of my life since before she was born - and there I was off on the sidelines, silent and unseen. It sounds petty and selfish when I put it into words. I just feel so invisible.

I suppose if I'd known I was going to feel so petty and silly about it, I could have volunteered to perform too. I used to dance a little … with Gres. I could never get up there like the captain did and perform a solo dance. But I don't know who I could have asked to dance with me. Or where I would have found the time to practice. I used to have hobbies, have fun. Now, I go to work and I take care of Naomi, and that's about it.

Is motherhood my only talent now? If it is, where's the applause?

I can't even use the excuse that I'm focusing on work. I mean, I'm not shirking my duties or anything, but … it's so much harder now to concentrate. I love xenobiology, always have, and say what you will about the Delta Quadrant, it's certainly full of new life forms to study. But I'm just not as sharp as I was before Naomi was born. That awful macrovirus invasion last month … I should have been on top of that the minute it was detected on board. I know I could have helped the Doctor develop the antigen more quickly, but when things started getting out of hand -

It's humiliating to admit, even to myself, that when I saw the first macrovirus, I just … panicked and ran from my quarters with Naomi to find help, instead of heading to sickbay. I carried my baby straight into the worst of it, in the mess hall.

Oh, crap. I wasn't going to think about that today.

I thought I'd gotten my baby killed. Again. With me this time.

Breathe, Sam. Focus. Naomi is fine. Yes, she's asleep, but she's breathing. You can breathe, too. Just … breathe.

God, I just wish I had someone here to talk to when I get like this. Gres always knew how to pull me back from worrying. He was so patient with me and my little neuroses. He would listen just long enough, then gently change the subject and draw my mind towards something happier. It seemed like he could read my thoughts just from the set of my shoulders.

(When did I start thinking of my husband in the past tense?)

I'm so lonely. It hurts to see people pairing off in happy couples. I miss my husband. It's like he's dead - I'm sure he thinks I'm dead. It's like I _am_ dead, but the people around me haven't noticed. They see Naomi and they tell me how glad they are to have a child on board, how it gives them joy and hope for the future. They see me as this … madonna figure, the mother of the whole ship's future somehow. They can't see how dead and empty I am inside.

Last night on my way to fetch Naomi after my shift, I passed the captain and commander, heading for the holodeck. He had a bottle of champagne in one hand, and his other hand was on the small of her back. They were smiling at each other, like two people sharing a secret joke. I don't think they even saw me.

Later in the mess hall I heard he'd taken her a beautiful big rose. More grist for the crew's gossip mill. I don't care if they're dating, or together or whatever. Why shouldn't they be? We are a long, long way from home.

Still, seeing them, I couldn't help feeling jealous. Not jealous of the captain - I hear the other girls drooling over Chakotay, but they're being ridiculous. Anyone can plainly see he's only got eyes for her. He's taken, whether _she_ knows it or not. But yes, jealous. Jealous of their freedom, little as it is with all their burdens of command. They have each other, or at least the chance of it, the choice if they want it. Who do I have? Who would have me, now, here? With a child to raise, and holos of my husband on the wall?

That part of my life is over. Dead with so much of the rest of me.


End file.
